


And We Shall Shock Them

by BleedingTypewriter



Series: To Itself do Rest but True [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akira calls this move the Nap-n-Jack, Light Angst with an Ambiguous Ending, Love/Hate, M/M, Manipulation, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Post-coital Akira mind-fucks pre-coital Akechi, Power Dynamics, Pre-OT3, Pseudo-cuckolding, Secret Relationships, Unclear Relationship Dynamics, but seriously he does whip one out beside Ryuji's sleeping body so there's that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28537254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingTypewriter/pseuds/BleedingTypewriter
Summary: Akira knows there's a lot wrong with what he's doing with Ryuji and Goro.Or rather...it's notwrong; just contorted, and probably massively unfair (especially where Ryuji is involved).He wonders how much worse it would need to feel to make him stop.As it stands, he can't give up either one of them.________A sequel toCome the Three Corners of the World in Armsexploring a little deeper how things work between Akira and Akechi.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakamoto Ryuji, Akechi Goro/Sakamoto Ryuji, Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakamoto Ryuji
Series: To Itself do Rest but True [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089938
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	And We Shall Shock Them

Ryuji falls asleep on his stomach, his bad leg kicked out to the side so his knee digs in just below Akira’s hip. He’s not a peaceful sleeper—his eyes roll behind their lids and the muscles in his neck twitch and he puffs out little vaguely funny _poof_ s of breaths now and then—but he’s a deep one. Akira runs his fingertips down the length of Ryuji’s bare back, too light for him to like it (because he’s ticklish like that—so much that it almost hurts, he says), and gets nothing in return. Just another random little _poof_ ; another twitch in the side of his throat.

It’s pushing one in the morning, but Akira texts Akechi, anyway. Or maybe he texts him _because_ it’s pushing one in the morning. He’s never quite sure, here, where the line is between their shared need for vindication and his own perverse desire to see Goro when he’s trying and failing to suppress his anger.

**Akira**

🍆 💦?

It’s a sick delight: watching the three bubbles appear and disappear at the bottom of his chat; a virtual sputter, almost.

**Akechi**

_I hate when you do that._

**Akira**

_what, text like a human?_

**Akechi**

_When you text like a plebeian._

**Akira**

😉😘🤪

This time there are no dots, just a long, silent pause so irritated Akira can practically see that beautiful tension Akechi gets along the pretty angles of his jaw when he’s _really_ pissed off.

God, Akira’s _just_ fucked Ryuji—gotten him off slow and a little painful, the way he likes; the way Akira knows will put him out for hours after—but there’s already a telltale tingle in the hollows of his hips.

**Akechi**

_It’s frustrating knowing you choose to be like this, you know._

Akira has to suck his lips between his teeth to stifle his laughter. He huffs quietly, and Ryuji lets out another _poof_ breath beside him, and he has to readjust as his oversensitive dick gets a little hard against his thigh.

**Akira**

_If you’re going to talk dirty to me, at least call me first._

**Akira**

_You’re terrible at sexting._

It’s not until Akechi really does call him that Akira remembers his phone isn’t on silent. His ringtone blares a series of sharp staccato beeps before he can get his thumb on the answer button, and it means he’s staring wide-eyed at Ryuji, making sure he’s still twitching and _poof_ -ing, at the same time Akechi drawls in his ear with that fake, sickly-sweet tone he gets when he’s good and aggravated about something, “Sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I still find you so interesting, Kurusu.”

Ryuji shifts, but it’s in his sleep. He nuzzles down into the pillow and furrows his eyebrows and hums once, gruff and short.

It’s cute.

It’s _nerve wracking_.

His own hand is almost too much, but Akira touches himself, anyway; palms over his tender head the way he thinks Akechi probably does to Ryuji when he’s in one of _those_ moods (when Ryuji ends up aching afterward; when he has to really make the effort to take what devastating more Akira has to give him).

“Probably that you’re a glutton for punishment,” Akira says, “Don’t detectives like things they can’t understand?”

“Only when they can figure it out, in the end.”

Akira hums.

Akechi does, too, and Akira gets the distinct feeling he thinks he’s scored some kind of point. He lets him think so—his smug arrogance radiates through the phone and it’s very annoying and _such_ a turn-on—but it’s not really fair. Akira agrees with him, after all—Akechi _will_ figure him out. Already has, probably, as much as anyone. (Ryuji _poof_ s; Akira thinks: alright, as much as _almost_ anyone, but maybe that doesn’t count, because he’s pretty sure Ryuji doesn’t believe half the things he knows.) Akechi’s made all these conclusions and so many of them are right and he still thinks that’s the _point_.

Akechi still thinks it’s not about both of them—and Ryuji, too, Akira guesses, though he feels more than a little bad about that—figuring out what the fuck to _do_ with all these valid, messy things they know about each other.

In so many ways, Akechi’s a fool.

And Akira has always been weak for fools.

Beside him, another muscle in Ryuji’s neck hops.

“Is he there right now?” Akechi’s good at taking the things he finds extraneous—excitement and anticipation (when they’re real, anyway; when they can be used against him)—and turning them into armor: a sort of prim, detached condescension. And as hot as it is when he finally drops it (because his extraneous bits are skewed and strange and _exactly_ Akira’s damaged type), Akira doesn’t have to rub it in Akechi’s face that he’s going to figure the detective prince out, too. He prefers to silently _know_ , like this, just how appealing the idea of Akira laying in the dark beside Ryuji is to Akechi.

“Yeah. He’s asleep.”

“Is he wearing that ridiculous tank top?”

He’s not. He’s naked except for Akira’s thin sheet, but it's still unseasonably warm and they’ve got the little rotating fan chugging away on the floor and it’s slowly, steadily bunching even that up around Ryuji’s waist.

“Yeah,” Akira lies, “He fell asleep on the futon beside me tonight. We were up late.”

Akechi snorts derisively. “Video games, I assume? Something mindless?”

Akira idly wraps his hand around his cock properly; squeezes a couple times to get himself used to it. He stifles another low laugh. Ryuji _had_ been mindless, truly; had let himself go limp and begged Akira to _make him take it_ and gone practically non-verbal as he’d frantically, messily jerked himself off in a strange, lilting rhythm, trying so hard to keep time with Akira’s slow, _slow_ thrusts.

“Yeah,” Akira lies again. “Totally mindless.”

“I left you something,” Akechi says, cocky and aloof, “On his back, if you can see it.”

Akira swallows, and he knows it’s loud enough for Akechi to hear, and he hopes it sounds enough like he’s just pulling Ryuji’s shirt aside, now; just noticing for the first time…

He can see it.

Of course he can see it.

He’s been staring at it since Ryuji arrived and stripped off his clothes and made a half-hearted joke about having to stand on the train so Akechi’s mess wouldn’t soak right through his pants before he could get to LeBlanc.

‘ _Ryuji, did Goro..._ ’ Akira’d breathed at the time, and traced his fingers around the oblong, hollow bruise at the back of Ryuji’s left shoulder, ‘ _...did he bite you when he came?_ ’

And Ryuji’d ducked his head and tapped an uncomfortable rhythm with one thumb against his bad leg and mumbled, finally, ‘ _No...he bit me when **I** did…_’

Akira tucks his phone against his shoulder and traces his finger around the mark again, now; lets the edges of his fingernails read the edges of the perfectly spaced, raised remnants of Akechi’s teeth, nearly invisible inside the ring of pretty bruising.

He traces around the other mark, too—the one he’d left right beside it as he’d lost it in Ryuji, grinding his hips in heavy, envy-drunk circles. He kind of regrets it now. It had seemed like such a deeply, primally pleasing _fuck you_ at the time—a reminder that Ryuji is _theirs_ , not Akechi’s alone—but it means Ryuji won’t be able to see Goro again until everything heals.

(Ostensibly, anyway...fucked out and near sleep, Ryuji’d made a weak, derisive noise when Akira’d idly brought it up, and slurred, “I’ll just get him to fuck me with my clothes on.”)

(Akira’d barely bitten down on some stupid thing that might’ve ruined everything, like _I don’t deserve you and you don’t deserve this, isn’t there enough here to just…?_ )

“Oh,” Akira sighs into the phone, and starts to really work his cock, languid and deliberate, “Were you rough with him today?”

There’s a tiny pause before Akechi answers, and he tries so hard to keep his voice even (which is pointless—Akira can always hear the loathing when his motor really starts running). “Yes. I was in a mood.” Another pause. “Do you like it?”

 _Fuck_ , Akira can nearly taste the vitriol in Akechi’s mouth. He wants _so badly_ for Akira to _hate_ what he’s done to Ryuji—and the hell of it is, Akira _does_ , hates it _so fucking much_ , even as it makes him swell up harder in his own fist—and knowing how much Akechi _loves_ the fact that Akira hates it…

“It’s grotesque,” Akira groans softly, “ _Fuck_ , it made me hard as soon as I saw it.”

“I’d have liked to see that. How did you keep him from noticing?”

Akira bites the inside of his cheek to quell a moan. His cock pulses hard, and it starts to _hurt_ , the way he’s jerking himself so steady and firm, but he doesn’t stop. “I didn’t,” he says, because the truth tastes sweet and dangerous, and he knows the lie afterward will be bitter and so much more addictive than it has any right to be. “He caught me. But Ryuji’s...you know the way he is. He told me not to worry about it. I don’t think...he didn’t realize why it happened.”

It’s not a total fabrication. Ryuji really had told Akira that once, before they’d started up together, when Akira’d been pent up and careless. Making it into a lie now is strangely exhilarating. Akechi’s so goddamned _pompous_ about the whole thing—so _sure_ that he’s got this one thing that Akira wants and can’t have—and it’s such a filthy, awful, _sexy_ look on him, but if he knew...fuck, _if he knew_ all the ways that Akira has this, too—has _Ryuji_ , too—he’d rage in ways Akira’s never seen. He’d go _apoplectic_. It’d be yet another thing—the most important, _worst_ thing—he’d staunchly refuse to acknowledge he and Akira _share_.

And it’s fucked up, probably, the way that thought gets Akira’s dick swelling up again, forcing itself toward orgasm.

It’s probably more fucked up the way Akira doesn’t mind, because if he explained it all to Akechi, he knows the detective would take it in, and sneer all mocking and gorgeous, and alongside all his rage there’d appear another delicious sliver of derision, and he’d say something cutting and perfect like, ‘ _We’re still exactly the same, aren’t we? You must hate this, too, even though you don’t have the right to, you cretin._ ’

“What would he say now, do you think?” Akechi asks, “If he woke up and caught you the way you are. Is your hand in your pants or are you brave enough to have your cock out?”

Akira’s throat clenches down on a moan. “In my pants,” he lies. “I don’t...ah, Goro, tell me how rough you were with him today.”

Ryuji’d said— _choked_ —between ragged pants that Akechi’d been _handsy_ , earlier; had barely gotten through Ryuji’s apartment door before he’d had both gloved hands buried to the knuckle in blonde hair; had Ryuji on his knees; had his dick out and Akira’s name on his resentful lips.

Akechi goes on like Akira hasn’t said anything. “So willing to make a mess just because you’re _afraid_?”

And god, _fuck_ , he makes the word _afraid_ sound so fucking _conceited_. He spits it like he can get Akira in the eye with it. He moans a little afterward, and Akira swears he can hear a brief, muffled sloughing noise, and he wonders if Akechi’s left his gloves on tonight.

And it’s so, so good, Goro thinking he has Akira’s fear like this, getting all self-satisfied and self-loathing all at once, but it’s better knowing that he _doesn’t_. Akira’s afraid, sure, but so is Akechi, and neither of them can give their terror to the other (they’re both so smart and so determined and so destructively devious, it’s such a decadent thought, but it’s too obvious). Goro doesn’t have Akira’s fear the way he thinks he does.

Akira looks back over at Ryuji; at the way his lips languish over each silly _poof_ ; at the two handsome, hideous marks on his shoulder.

He feels awful, and wonders how much worse he’d have to feel to make himself stop. “Tell me,” he says, “how you were with him today.”

Akechi hisses, and it might be pleasure or it might be hatred, but either way it has Akira _close_ ; has his dick tapping lewdly against the thin sheet drawn like a backslash across him and Ryuji. “ _Possessive_.”

God, it’s so stupid—so fucking stupid the way Goro has all these things and knows all these things and _still_ thinks himself a fraud. Akira runs his fingers over the infinity symbol of both bite marks again; thinks that maybe this says something about his taste in men. “You don’t deserve him,” he groans, and starts squeezing his fingers hard around his head on every upstroke, some strange approximation of the way Ryuji touches him (even and careful and desperate to please) and the way he imagines Akechi would (relentless and strategic and cruel).

Akechi’s breath shudders over the line. Akira wishes the connection were better. He wonders how sloppy the noise is: Akechi’s leather gloves against his dick when he’s ready to come. “You think you do?”

The hatred, the _hatred_ , it gets Akira _right there_ , ready to lose it, but it’s not quite...it’s _not quite_ …

“Don’t I?” Akira asks, and lets it sound as unsure as he is (because he doesn’t deserve Ryuji, he doesn’t, he _knows_ he doesn’t, but that’s half of what makes him want him, and he’ll never be used to this odd juxtaposition, being so tickled and so disgusted at knowing exactly how Akechi feels even when—especially when—he won’t admit it).

“No,” Akechi says, “You don’t.”

“Neither do you.”

“But I have him.”

“Not in the ways that I do.”

“Not in the ways you want either.”

“I know, _fuck_ , I _know_ …”

They devolve into increasingly pinched off, poorly aimed attacks, back and forth and back and forth, striking at whatever bits and pieces the other leaves unguarded until they’re nearly growling at each other, interrupting themselves with the kinds of basic expletives Akechi’d find distasteful in any other regard. They hate that they love that they hate that they love, and beside Akira Ryuji goes on twitching and _poof_ ing, and the whole thing is too much between one breath and the next.

“Fuck, Goro, why can’t you _just fucking_ –”

Akira doesn’t know what.

Or rather, he does, but the problem is he already knows the answer, and it’s no better or worse than _any_ of the answers that _any of them_ have for…

And Akira can’t think about those answers or he’ll start wondering if they’re good enough...if maybe he’s weak for fools because he is one, too, and all three of them should just…

(... _maybe all three of them should fucking just_ …)

“I can’t stand either one of you.” Akechi’s voice is thin; incensed; practically whiny.

Akira thrusts up hard into his own hand, and stares at Ryuji to make sure his hips’ bouncing against the mattress doesn’t wake him up, and accuses, “Yes you can, you just don’t want to, you coward.”

Akechi does this thing when he gets off: grunts a little, like whatever’s happening to his body is being ripped out of him, but Akira’s never sure whether it’s by outside forces or Akechi himself. He’d know if he got to see it, he’s pretty sure, but he almost likes it better this way—being able to decide for himself, based on his own mood, what Akechi’s brand of indignation is at being made to come.

Akira shoots over his thumb and belly button with sluggish, second-orgasm determination. He feels it right up to his sternum, and he twists his wrist about it; holds on and wrings out as much pleasure from it all before it turns to guilt-ridden nausea.

(Only for a while, though. Never long enough to compare with the nausea that seeps in when he starts needing this again; never long enough for Akira to compare, see which one’s _really_ worse, back-to-back.)

Ryuji’s neck twitches.

His bad leg shifts; digs further into Akira’s hip.

His slack lips _poof_ around an easy breath.

Akira wonders if trying to pant this quietly is providing his own brain more or less oxygen than if he’d just give up the ghost and heave the last of the adrenaline out the way it wants to go.

There are so many parts about this thing that hurt, but Akira thinks this might be the worst: listening to Akechi catch his breath over the phone, tinny and inhuman, unable to see what he looks like; wondering if it’s any different than what Akechi does in these moments when he has a person— _their_ person—looking up at him, post-coital and limp (and neither of them getting, really, that _Ryuji’s_ the one who should be looking down at _Goro_ , all things considered).

“You’re _trash_ , Kurusu,” Akechi breathes. “You and him both.”

“Maybe,” Akira says. He brings one hand up to hold the phone properly again; runs the finger of his dirtied hand over the marks on Ryuji’s shoulder. It leaves behind the barest milky white trail. “Me, for sure. What’s that say about you, do you think?”

Akechi’s laugh is high and round and smooth. “I hate you so much,” he says, back to placating normal, like he’s recommending a particularly good tea house, “For so many reasons. Would you like to know the worst one?”

Akira finally, grudgingly, lets go of his flagging, sore cock, and can’t decide whether what he’s doing with all the sludge filling him up is indulgent or avoidant.

He doesn’t answer because he knows he doesn’t have to—knows it’ll just make it easier for Akechi if he doesn’t (and despite it all, fuck Akira running and all the ways he _wishes_ he could prioritize Ryuji here, he still wants to make this as easy for Goro as possible).

“I think I could hurt him less if it weren’t for you.”

Akira knows what comes out of his mouth sounds like a laugh. Maybe it is, kind of; a sort of wordless _that makes two of us_.

It’s not funny, though.

It’s not funny.

He chuckles low and careless.

Akechi mirrors it, high-pitched and crackly through the phone.

“Do you think it’d be better or worse if we—?” Akira clears his throat; covers the ensuing silence with the faint _swish-swoosh_ of fabric-on-skin he can hear in reverb on the line as he curls over his own stomach to clean up the one part of this mess he can wipe up with a towel.

Ryuji mumbles something in his sleep; nestles messily, painfully closer to Akira; _poof_ s and twitches and remains the quietest and most innocent one in at least this one regard.

“No,” Akechi breathes. “But…”

“I know,” Akira replies. “Yeah.” He tosses the rag off to one side, ready to be picked up and laundered and tucked back beneath the mattress before Morgana can catch wind. “But…”

Akechi hums.

Akira sighs.

Ryuji twitches.

But…

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of absolute _nowhere_ when [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqonoluna/pseuds/aqonoluna) brought up on Twitter the idea of what Akira and Akechi's dynamic is in the Come the Three Corners universe. (The answer, apparently, was "a great big dark sexy yikes.")
> 
> Now we have a problem, though. This leaves us with the biggest unanswered question: what's the dynamic of all three together? 👀👀👀 If you know what these titles are referencing, you'll know there's one more line to play with...
> 
> I am still on my [Twitter bullshit](https://twitter.com/BleedingType) (warning: still casually NSFW/horny on main).
> 
> I am also still ostensibly in both the RyuGoro discord and Pegoryu discord, if you want to say hi.


End file.
